


Old and Happy

by Saetha



Series: Two Suns in the Sunset [6]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Durin shenanigans, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, Happy AU, IKEA, M/M, Modern AU, Permanent Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sappy Ending, YES THERE IS A PUPPY, puppy, this is so bloody sappy and fluffy you have no idea, yes I am writing fix-its for my own fics shhhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:23:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7529059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saetha/pseuds/Saetha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternative, happier ending for "For Whom the Bell Tolls". After the events at Smaug's mansion, Dwalin and Thorin take a while to get back on their feet - but once they do, they find their ways back into life bit by bit. A new apartment, a dog and finally, some happiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old and Happy

**Author's Note:**

> HERE IT FINALLY IS. I had this written for almost two months but it fit the Tuesday prompt for Dworin Week so well that I held it back until now. This is possibly my most favourite thing I've written for Dworin Week - not so much pure happiness but content. Bone-deep contentness and finally some wel-deserved peace for those two. <3

“Thorin, we are NOT taking the red wardrobe. For the last time, no!”

Thorin just stared at him as if Dwalin had said ‘gay marriage is an abomination’ or something equally outrageous.

“How are the two of us even a thing? You have no taste in colours whatsoever,” he finally pressed out, sounding utterly hurt. “I’ve never felt so betrayed by anyone in my entire life before, Dwalin.”

Dwalin simply rolled his eyes in response.

“And I can’t believe we’ve been standing in this row at IKEA for thirty minutes now and been arguing about the colours of a fucking _wardrobe_.”

“Well. I’m making lots of useful suggestions here but you are _insisting_ they are all wrong.” Thorin raised his cane and pointed it at every single one of the wardrobes he had suggested so far in sequence. “ _This_ one is too wide, _this_ one is too blue, _this_ one doesn’t have enough space to hang up shirts, _this_ one is too high, _this_ one is too red…”

“That’s because they _are_!” Dwalin shot back. He walked down the aisle a little and came to a stop in front of a simple wooden wardrobe. “Here, why don’t we just take something like this and be done with it?”

“You can’t be serious.”Thorin positively gaped at him.

“Why not?” Dwalin shrugged. “It’s cheap, it looks good and unlike the ones _you_ suggested, it even fits our room. It’s perfect.”

“But it’s so…simple.” Thorin was still shaking his head.

“Then put a Lord of the Rings poster on your side of it,” Dwalin suggested without skipping a beat. Thorin rolled his eyes, about to shoot a fitting reply at him but then shut up. In a way, Dwalin _was_ right.

“Maybe I’ll buy some paint and just paint my side red then,” he grinned.

“The hell you will.” Dwalin glared at him. “No painting furniture in my apartment!”

“ _Our_ apartment,” Thorin corrected him. Dwalin tried to stay serious for a moment longer, but failed. The smile that had been lurking in his eyes and at the corners of his mouth broke forth and lit up his face. Thorin felt himself responding immediately. With the numerous days in hospital and later rehab after the final fight against Smaug and Azog they hadn’t really had time to think much about their living situation – until they both realised that they were technically still living in Nori’s apartment and should truly get one of their own now.

Sorting out a new apartment and all the furniture to go with it made Thorin feel weirdly young again – as if another part of life was beginning, one that should be untainted by the shadows of the past even though its tendrils would always grasp at them and never fully let them go, he knew. The strange void he was experiencing after the deaths of Smaug and Azog had finally begun to fill at least partly. Maybe it was good that they had never really thought about moving before everything had found its end.

“Alright. Maybe we should go look at something else and then come back to these?” Thorin suggested.

“Probably,” Dwalin grumbled. “I still don’t see why we can’t just take the simple one and be done with it.”

Thorin just shook his head at him before he began limping off towards the next aisle.

“Here. Let me go look for a shower curtain and you can look for a nice set of chairs for the kitchen table.”

“No way.” Dwalin shook his head. “You’ll get lost. And I’ll have to have your name called out of the speakers like that one time when I was little and Balin lost me in that huge Walmart.”

“Shut up.” Thorin elbowed him in the side – the healthy one, where he wouldn’t aggravate any wounds. “I’m not that bad, okay? And at the speed I’m walking you’ll be there and back before me.”

“Shush.” Dwalin pulled him close and, completely oblivious to the slightly disgusted stares of a couple at the other end of the isle, proceeded the plant a kiss in his hair on the side of his head. It had finally grown long enough that Thorin could bind it back in a small ponytail if he chose, after having been singed so badly in the fire. Thorin had been trying to keep his bitterness at the fact that he would never be walking without a cane again in check but at times it still came forward, no matter what he did. He told himself that he should be grateful that they had both survived, that his family was fine and those who had wanted to harm him were mostly either dead or behind bars – but sometimes it just wasn’t enough. Sometimes he simply wanted to shout his pain into the world and smash something until his knuckles bled. Making bad jokes about it paradoxically seemed to help rather well.

“Also,” Dwalin added. “Do I have to remind you that you got lost in a supermarket once? And not the giant Walmart, either.”

“I wasn’t lost.” Thorin said indignantly. He reciprocated Dwalin’s kiss by planting a tender one on Dwalin’s cheek himself, just where the burn scars from the fire began. “I was only looking for the orange juice. Not my fault they were hiding that in the back.”

“Right.” Dwalin rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I’m going to come with you whether you like it or not.”

“Yessir.” Thorin mimed a salute and now it was Dwalin’s turn to punch him lightly in the ribs.

“You’re impossible,” he sighed. “Can’t take you anywhere, I swear.”

“As if you’re any better,” Thorin laughed. “Now come on, let’s go look for a shower curtain.”

He set off without waiting for Dwalin.

“Thorin, you’re going the wrong way.” Dwalin sounded like he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to laugh or cry right now. Thorin turned around and frowned.

“No, I’m quite sure it’s this way. We walked past them on our way here, no?”

“Yeah, but this way is a lot faster. Remember, we walked around the section with the drawers and the one with the lamps-“

“But the lamps were before the shower curtains.” Thorin frowned. “C’mon, my brains got quite scrambled during that shoot-out but it wasn’t _that_ bad. I know where we are.”

“Your brain is just fine, but you still don’t know where we are,” Dwalin retorted.

“I _do_ know,” Thorin insisted, even though he could feel his resolve weakening. He suddenly wasn’t quite sure anymore whether the route he’d had in his mind was truly the right one. It was a feeling of unreality that he had experienced more than once recently and it was disconcerting – he had always been bad at directions, but it had been rare for him to doubt the actual realness of the world around him in general and his perception of it in particular. He hadn’t told Dwalin about it, not yet, but his partner of course felt something had shifted, away from the playful mood they had been in just now.

“Hey, it’s alright,” he said softly. He moved closely so that their shoulders were brushing and when Thorin didn’t step away, put his arm around his shoulder. “I’m sorry. You just wanna try the way you suggested? I mean it’s not like a few minutes make that much of a difference.”

Thorin shrugged, not quite sure what he wanted. Deep inside he knew that Dwalin was probably right about the way, but he wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to try his own way back just to set his memory right. He wished rather fervently that IKEA had a damn map for its gigantic store.

“How about we go to look at some the drawers first,” he then suggested. At least those were only three aisles over and they _both_ remembered that.

“Good idea.” Dwalin smiled when Thorin slipped his arm under his – he knew that is was rare for Thorin to show their relationship so openly, but somehow Thorin felt like he needed the closeness right now and Dwalin seemed more than happy to oblige.

“By the way…” Thorin felt that this might be a good moment to talk about a topic that had been in his head for a few days now. “Bofur called me the other day.”

“Bragging about how his last date with Dís went really well again?” Dwalin grinned. Bofur had famously been trying to woo Thorin’s sister for years and at some point in the past months Dís had given in, ‘just to give it a try’ as she said.

“That too.” Thorin smiled. “But the main reason was different. He said that one of his buddies over at the K9 told him that several of their dogs in the breeding program had pups recently and that there’s too many of them to train, so they’re looking to sell them. He told me that people in the force would get first dips though and they might give a few of them away for free and…”

His voice trailed off, hoping that Dwalin would get the gist of what he was saying. Thorin looked at his partner, waiting for his reaction.

Dwalin simply threw his head back and laughed.

“Dwalin?” Thorin asked nervously. Whatever he had expected, it certainly wasn’t _this_.

“I can’t believe this,” Dwalin wheezed. “Bofur, that damn schemer. I got the same call from him two days ago.”

“What?” Thorin supposed he must have looked rather flabbergasted since Dwalin broke into another fit of laughter at the sight of his face.

“Yep. Asked me if we’d like to adopt a puppy from the K9 breeding program.”

“Wow.” Thorin shook his head, not quite knowing what else to say.

“Yeah, I know.” Dwalin was still grinning and chuckling quietly to himself. “I was going to bring it up in a bit as well. And since we’re here already, shouldn’t we get something from the pet section? If they have things like that here at IKEA.”

“Wait,” Thorin interrupted him. “Does that mean your answer is yes?”

“Uhm. Yes?” Dwalin replied. ”I guess so? Unless you don’t want to?”

“We’re getting a dog? You know, an actual life-sized animal that needs to be taken care of and walked regularly and trained and…”

“What are you implying, that I haven’t thought properly about it?” Dwalin chuckled.

“Well.” Thorin simply shrugged and smiled back at him. Dwalin murmured something under his breath that Thorin wisely chose not to hear before shaking his head.

“Well, I have. Let’s go get that puppy. And give Thranduil a heart attack when we bring it to work.”

“Maybe I can declare it as a service dog. Especially if I teach it to pick things that have fallen to the ground for me.” Thorin was only half-joking – bending own, especially when he was standing, was almost impossible for him now and he hated asking Dwalin for help whenever he dropped something. And of course both of them were thinking about those nights where one of them, sometime Dwalin and sometimes Thorin, had woken up screaming thinking that their bodies were burning to ash in the heat of burning house or getting crushed by the falling debris with no one to pull them out this time. Thorin had worked with dogs enough before to know how much they could help.

“We should.” Dwalin nodded along to Thorin’s thoughts. “It’s also totally worth it for seeing Thranduil’s face alone, I think.”

“Yeah.” Thorin laughed. He looked into Dwalin’s eyes and wondered how he had been able to spend so many years in the unit without ever acknowledging what those eyes were able to do to him. There was no small part of him that wished things between them had happened sooner – but there was also a part of him that knew that maybe it was best how it had gone, that what it was between them had grown slowly and naturally. Being friends first and then falling in love had certainly made at least some things easier.

Someone more romantically inclined than him might have grasped Dwalin’s hand now but Thorin simply gave him another smile before he brushed his shoulder with Dwalin’s.

“C’mon, let’s go and find some more furniture.”

*

BONUS OMAKE

“I cannot believe you two got a puppy.” Dís was shaking her head but of course Thorin could see the smile in her eyes. “It’s like you’re straight out of a romantic comedy or something.”

“Totally. The table edge over there is probably the straightest thing in the room.” Dwalin snorted from the other end of the room where he was playing with Bucky, their newly acquired puppy. “As if any romcom would ever star two middle-aged dudes, one of them physically disabled and the other with ugly scars all over his head thanks to having a house explode and fall on top of them.”

“Sounds like a good movie to me.” Thorin smiled. “At least it’s got a happy ending.”

“True.” Dwalin came over, trying to ignore the puppy that had clamped its teeth into his trousers and was now getting dragged along the floor. With a grin he leaned over to kiss Thorin deeply, not even stopping when there was a gagging noise from Kíli’s corner of the room, where he and his brother were currently helping to unpack the crookery.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you are incredibly sappy?” Dís asked them but there was only affection behind the slight mocking of her tone.

“Naaaah.” Dwalin grinned as they finally separated again. “That’s just your imagination. I mean, have you _seen_ Aragorn and Arwen? You’d think Tauriel is the oldest in that relationship, not those two…”

Dís snorted, but was unable to disagree with him.

“Thorin, where do those books go?” she asked as she took another bunch of them out of the box in front of her. Thorin looked up from where he was sitting and trying to screw together their new chest of drawers.

“Second set of shelves, third shelf from the top, on the left,” he told her a moment later. Dwalin shook his head as he bent down to finally extract the puppy from where it was still attacking his trousers.

“You know, we’ve lived together for so long now and yet I _still_ don’t get your system for how you arrange your books.”

“Wait, Uncle Thorin has a _system_?” Fíli called over from where he was currently balancing a big stack of plates.

“Of course I do.” Thorin shouted back with a frown on his face as he tried to determine which one of the 50 different screws he was supposed to put into the pieces of wood in front of him right now. “You all just don’t see it, but it’s there.”

“Right. Keep dreaming.” Dwalin mumbled under his breath, but of course Thorin heard him. Instead of replying he simply threw a balled up plastic bag at him. It dropped to the floor where Bucky was immediately all over it and Dwalin spend the next five minutes somehow trying to wrestle it back out between Bucky’s teeth.

“Hey Dwalin.” Dís tapped him on the shoulder from where she had been sorting through the contents of yet another book box. “Care to stop coddling the puppy for a while and help us get some actual work done?”

Thorin snorted from where he was sitting without looking up.

“Don’t even try it, sis. If it goes on like this he’ll soon throw me out of our bed so he can have Bucky sleeping next to him instead.”

“Well, at least the puppy doesn’t steal all my blankets!” Dwalin shot back at him. “And it doesn’t always have icy feet that suddenly press against your legs.”

Dís suppressed what was probably meant to be a giggle but sounded like she was accidentally choking instead.

“Well, maybe I’ll chuck _you_ out for Bucky instead then.” Thorin countered. “Bucky doesn’t snore as loudly. And he also doesn’t take up almost the entirety of the bed.”

“Pah.” Dwalin didn’t even try to sound miffed and there was no betraying the smile playing around his lips. “You’re just jealous of Bucky, admit it.”

“Right.” Thorin deadpanned and just stared at him.

“Frerin would’ve loved that conversation.” Dís said quietly. Her movements as she was sorting the books had stilled as she looked over to meet Thorin’s eyes. He managed to meet her gaze only for a moment before looking away, knowing that both of their eyes were holding the same pain. For a moment Thorin was angry that she had brought up their brother, had dared to destroy this light moment and-

And suddenly he found himself agreeing with her. Frerin _would_ have loved that conversation. And by saying so she hadn’t only reminded him of everything that he’d lost, but also everything that they’d shared and that would live on without him.

“He’d have recorded that and put it online. Under ‘threesome gone wrong’ or something.” Thorin didn’t quite smile as he said it, not yet, but it was close. He took a deep breath, wondering if it was alright to say the next few words. “And Balin would have laughed and declared us all impossible idiots.”

He saw Dwalin looking up and found the same pain in his gaze that must be sitting in Dís’ and his own eyes. Then a small smile appeared on Dwalin’s face.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding rough around the edges. “He would have.”

There was a moment of silence as nobody moved before Bucky suddenly yowled. They all looked over to him at the same time and saw that he had somehow managed to entangle himself completely in a rather larger piece of cord and plastic, now yowling helplessly as every single movement only seemed to restrict his motions further. 

“Oh, Bucky…” Dwalin sighed, even as all three of them burst out laughing, soon joined by Fíli and Kíli from the kitchen who had been wondering what the commotion was all about. He and Dís somehow managed to untangle Bucky from everything and were rewarded with a little yelp as Bucky jumped and rigorously shook out his fur.

“Are you quite sure you’re ready for the challenge of having a puppy living with you?” Dís asked, laughing.

“Och, quite sure,” Thorin smiled, putting the screwdriver in his hand aside to reach down and pet the little dog as he came tottering over to him. Moments later Bucky was sitting on his lap and obviously enjoyed getting petted all over by Thorin.

“You are going to have the most spoiled dog in the entire neighbourhood,” Dís remarked.

“Definitely not,” Dwalin stated. “At least we don’t give it treats every step of the way like that lady two houses down.”

“You’re becoming actual middle-aged people.” That was Fíli, staring at them in fascination. “A dog, a nice apartment, gossip about your neighbours…what on earth happened?”

Dwalin and Thorin exchanged a glance and neither of them was able to tell who started laughing first.

“Told ya. We’re becoming old.” Thorin looked at Dwalin who was still laughing loudly.

“Yep.” Dwalin came over to pet Bucky again, Thorin leaning his head back so it rested against his chest.

“Old,” he bent down to kiss Thorin again. “And happy.”


End file.
